Master of Arts in Design Innovation

at Manchester Metropolitan University United Kingdom

Whether your ambition is to help an athlete smash world records, or improve the quality of life for recovering patients, we can give you the tools to achieve it.

Our sport and exercise science degree covers a broad spectrum of themes across sport and health. You’ll build an understanding of the key disciplines of biomechanics, physiology and psychology, and then develop specialist skills and knowledge according to your strengths and interests. You'll also have the opportunity to spend an extra year expanding your horizons, working on a placement in industry.

Study sport and exercise science at Manchester Met and you’ll have the support of our team of accredited sport scientists and experts who work with business, the NHS, government and international athletes. With our network of local sports organisations and health providers, you’ll have plenty of great opportunities to apply your knowledge and secure work placements.

Placement options

Our sports and exercise science degree offers the chance to spend a year getting a taste of professional life. If you choose to go down this route, your degree will take one year longer, with the third year spent working in industry. These optional placements not only give you the opportunity to develop your core skills and learn about how a business really operates in your industry, but also shows employers that you’re ready to get to work. We offer a range of services to help you find the right placement, including employer presentations, advice and placement fairs.

The MArch is a lively student-centered environment, where peer-to-peer learning, practice-based research and live events projects connect students, expert academics, design professionals and wider communities. During the MArch, you will develop, expand and refine your design and theoretical skills whilst creating a portfolio that will enable you to find employment in a leading architecture practice.

Physical geography offers the chance to understand, investigate and model the physical interactions and processes that influence our environment and landscape. Study physical geography at Manchester Met and you’ll examine modern environmental phenomena and the long-term evolution of the landscape. You’ll explore Earth’s dynamic nature – not just looking at how it changes, but also how much it has changed over time – and you’ll investigate human impacts upon it, particularly in terms of past and future climate change.

While you can learn a lot on campus, there’s no substitute for seeing the physical landscape for yourself. As part of our program, we regularly engage in fieldwork, from day-long trips to residential trips across the UK and overseas. Being in Manchester also means you’ll have plenty to explore on the doorstep, with four national parks within a couple of hours’ drive. You can even spend a year developing your professional skills working on a placement, or broadening your horizons by studying abroad with the four-year route.

Our BA (Hons) Product Design and Craft course has a material-led, experimental philosophy that pursues a thinking through making approach to design, supporting the development of personal creative agendas. Through a program of study that explores our understanding of the material world, you will learn how to be a designer and maker of objects that enhance our daily interactions. You will develop essential skills in creative thinking and design strategy, and then apply these to challenge how you design for product and for craft.

You will discover how to design and produce objects that embrace both traditional handmade approaches and contemporary machine and digital manufacturing. Through creative experimentation, we strive to give ideas a material voice, as the thinking behind an object and its material execution are of equal importance. Your design work will also look to address a diverse range of areas including social issues, global awareness and local demand by considering the objects you design and the materials and processes you use. This course will enable you to explore strategies, materials and processes so you can develop creative and professional skills to support a sustainable career in design and craft making.

The MA in Graphic Design & Art Direction program is designed for creative practitioners who wish to advance their knowledge, skills and specialism within the field of visual communication.

Each student will develop a practice-led investigation within this broader context, actively constructing a bespoke body of design knowledge which combines theory, practice, research, entrepreneurship and innovation from a wide range of creative activities.

They will be taught to question and expand their creative thinking and generic design process by developing their analytical skills; engaging in critical dialogues; work independently, collaboratively and interdisciplinary; experimenting in a range of directions before delivering professional and innovative outcomes to defined audiences with confidence. All creative activities are supported by strategic thinking, robust methodologies and informed by practice-led research.

Political and economic developments such as Brexit mean that international trade agreements, foreign direct investment and the attractiveness of where a company does business and accesses talent are more important than ever.

In the digital age, almost every business operates on the world stage and supplies to multiple countries. To help you compete in a hugely competitive global landscape, our International Business Management degree will give you a greater understanding of the nuances, challenges and opportunities of operating overseas.

Exploring enterprise, entrepreneurship and emerging markets

We’ll help you gain specialist knowledge in managing people of different cultures and backgrounds, and the political and governing structures of different markets that influence how businesses operate.

You’ll also develop the cross-cultural management skills you need to build international business relationships in often volatile political, cultural and economic environments.

Our International Business Management degree offers four-year routes where you can spend your third year on placement or study abroad at one of our overseas partner universities. Past students have worked for Johnson and Johnson in Tokyo, Hellman Worldwide Logistics in the USA and Warner Bros in London.

By the time you leave our business school, you’ll have the business knowledge and cross-cultural management skills to kick-start your career in the UK and abroad.

With a toolkit that mixes the creative and the technical, an animator does all this and more. Whether working in the artistic or commercial worlds, animators produce the moving images for anything from film and broadcast media to digital platforms and video games. Our BA (Hons) Animation course brings together key aspects of contemporary professional animation practice to help you prepare for an exciting range of careers, from animation to concept art to games development.

As an animation student you will be part the School of Digital Arts, a vibrant community that offers the chance to explore every aspect of what it means to work in the digital arts. You will work across a range of creative practices – just as the professionals do – to collaborate on cross-disciplinary group projects, alongside photographers, sound engineers, filmmakers, games and media professionals. And, just as we mirror industry practices, we also work with industry-standard tools – learning within a brand new, purpose-built building that comes equipped with the latest emerging technologies for animation, filmmaking and more.

Manchester offers an ideal setting as an animation student. A global, creative city, it has a long-established history of animation and is home to Cosgrove Hall Films – creators of numerous children’s animations and whose company founders were both students of Manchester Metropolitan University. Today the city has a thriving industry, with a significant TV, film and digital production presence at MediaCityUK, which is home to the BBC, ITV and a host of independent media companies, all of which offer you some inspiring opportunities.

With a course that’s built on our local heritage and that makes the most of our industry links, you’ll have the chance to develop the skills, build the network and gain the experience that rewarding careers are made from.

Marketing is a business function with the power to shape everything from sales and customer service to product development and brand loyalty. The best marketers see the big picture – when they look at the business landscape, they identify the opportunities to communicate and influence audiences, and spot the threats that could damage their brands. This marketing degree is all about exploring that landscape, taking those opportunities and avoiding those threats.

You’ll look at different media and methods of communication, study how to analyse and segment audiences, and discover how to craft and deliver the right message at the right time. To start with, you’ll learn about marketing fundamentals, but you’ll also have the flexibility to choose units that interest you most as you progress. By the time you leave us, you’ll not only understand the theory behind effective marketing – you’ll also have a range of practical, professional skills.

Above all, you’ll be ready for a career in marketing – following in the footsteps of graduates from this course now working in advertising, account management, media planning, public relations, event management and more.

Placement options

Our BA (Hons) Marketing degree offers the chance to spend a year getting a taste of professional life. It not only gives you the opportunity to develop your core skills and learn about how a business really operates in your industry, but also shows employers that you’re ready to get to work.

Whether your ambition is to help an athlete smash world records, or improve the quality of life for recovering patients, we can give you the tools to achieve it.

Our sport and exercise science degree covers a broad spectrum of themes across sport and health. You’ll build an understanding of the key disciplines of biomechanics, physiology and psychology, and then develop specialist skills and knowledge according to your strengths and interests. You'll also have the opportunity to spend an extra year expanding your horizons, working on a placement in industry.

Study sport and exercise science at Manchester Met and you’ll have the support of our team of accredited sport scientists and experts who work with business, the NHS, government and international athletes. With our network of local sports organisations and health providers, you’ll have plenty of great opportunities to apply your knowledge and secure work placements.

The world of business is always evolving – adapting to new technology, moving with geopolitical events and reacting to the shifting financial climate. But there is one constant: people. Growth, change, success – it’s only possible with a well-managed workforce, no matter what the industry or sector.

By focusing on the human element of effective business leadership, this is a course that offers vital transferrable skills, providing the first steps of a range of career paths. You’ll leave us equipped to pursue roles across a vast range of sectors in a wide variety of disciplines.

We’ve built an impressive network with industry experts and major employers – sharing understanding and opportunity. For us, it means keeping our expertise at the cutting edge of business and human resource management. For you, it means learning from leading professionals from organizations like PwC and AJ Bell. Plus, if you opt for a third-year placement, it’s a network that can open doors to the sort of employers where you can turn classroom theory into workplace practice.

Study abroad
Instead of a placement, you'll have the opportunity to spend up to a year overseas, studying with one of our partner institutions across Europe, or beyond. Go abroad in the third year of your degree, and you’ll not only learn about other cultures, improve your language skills and discover more about yourself – you’ll also boost your career prospects. Having first-hand knowledge of another country’s cultures and traditions can take you far in a range of careers. And, by going abroad you’ll also demonstrate the kind of independent spirit and adaptability that many employers want.